YOUR CART

A New Year of Ministry

On November 12 at 7 pm, we will be holding our yearly charge conference. At charge conference, we review with our district superintendent (DS) the past year of ministry and make plans for the year to come. This year, our DS Rev. Victor Gomez will be leading charge conference differently than we have done before. Charge conference will be a special worship service focusing on the our vision and call to ministry. Everyone is welcome to come and be a part of this worship!

Blessings on the journey, Jim

Update on General Conference 2019

As you likely have heard, our denomination's General Conference will be meeting at the end of February, 2019 to discuss the recommendations of the Commission on the Way Forward. This commission was tasked with coming up with a plan for how we can faithfully move forward as a denomination given the diversity of belief on issues of human sexuality. They drafted three potential plans that were submitted to our bishops. The Council of Bishops endorsed the plan that would allow more local autonomy with the local congregation having the ability to set its own standards on related issues but passed along all three plans for consideration by the General Conference. This past week, our Judicial Council reviewed all three plans to determine whether they were in keeping with the Constitution of our denomination. They ruled that the endorsed plan was largely constitutional with only minor adjustments needed to bring it fully in line. One of the other plans - one to maintain the status quo but with increased enforcement and mandatory penalties for disobedience - was ruled to be largely unconstitutional as it sets up a different standard for obedience on issues of sexuality than on other areas thus bypassing the guarantee of fair process. No ruling was given on the third plan that creates three related denominations as it already required changes to the constitution. Please continue to keep our denomination and our delegates in your prayers as we wrestle with these sensitive issues. While this is a stressful, uncertain time to be United Methodist, remember that at the end of the conference we will still serve a wonderful God who is capable of amazing things, and we will still be family despite the differences we may have. How we treat one another in this time is as important as what we may wind up deciding.

Living in Community

Thank you, Tina, for supplying our desserts for Wednesday at the Port recently!

Thanks to everyone who worked on the cookbook project!From submitting recipes to editing the book, from buying copies to selling them,your generosity of time and money is greatly appreciated!We have sold out and raised a lot of money to care for the windows.

Our windows have been prepared for the final framing of the new covers!The project should be completed in the next few weeks.

Don't forget to continue praying for the leader(s) of the church you drew last week.